BatchEncoder (Audio Conversion GUI)

2006-12-07 08:57:48

I would like to introduce my project called BatchEncoder (formerly known as theFrontend).

BatchEncoder is an audio files conversion software. It supports most of popular audio file formats including lossy and lossless compression. The program is very simple to use. BatchEncoder is basically GUI front-end for command-line tools. All it does is create background processes and pass arguments to it with options set in presets/format menu and additionally adds input and output file paths. For specific options for each format use help available for command-line tools.

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

Tags are not transferred, but I was thinking about this feature. The problem is I am using only command-line tools while working with audio files. Nothing is done in program (theForntend is only a frontend, this is the basic concept of program) that might change contents of the file. So I need some tagging tool to transfer tags. This way I would extract tag from input file before conversion and add tag after conversion to output file.

Any suggestion from your side about command-line tagging tool? From my side I can without any difficulty this feature.

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

No offense intended but, aren't there already a lot of front-ends out there?I mean, foobar2000 and/or MediaCoder cater to most encoding/transcodingneeds as it is. Will this front-end offer something new?

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

Any suggestion from your side about command-line tagging tool? From my side I can without any difficulty this feature.

Tag can handle FLAC, Vorbis, APEv2 and ID3v1 tagging. Tycho's metamp3 looks good for writing ID3v2 (and ID3v1) tags. In fact, it has the --fit switch which is my preferred method of tagging with LAME: ID3v1 with ID3v2 only where necessary. The Nero AAC encoder has it's own separate tagger IIRC. I dunno, but with Vorbis, ID3 and APE tags covered that's all or most I think. Maybe there could be some way of linking a format to it's tagger? There's also the possibility of tagging while encoding, with apps like FLAC, LAME, WavPack, etc. Tag will read all the tag types listed above, so maybe it could be used as the reader? Just a few hastily-thrown-together thoughts.

No offense intended but, aren't there already a lot of front-ends out there?I mean, foobar2000 and/or MediaCoder cater to most encoding/transcodingneeds as it is. Will this front-end offer something new?

Although foobar is also, theFrontend seems extremely extensible, so obscure encoders not already covered (e.g.: speex) can easily be added, new presets created, and most importantly shared (as they are XML they can even easily be posted to a forum thread). Many people still use MultiFrontend even though we have foobar and MediaEncoder...

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

The main problem with tagging using external command-line tools is preservation of characters in different code pages. Windows uses current code page of your locale (you can change this, but this is not usable for theFrontend purposes) and I need UTF-8 or even Unicode character to be send via command-line. The best solution would be using internal manipulation of tags done by theFrontend.

About extensibility of theFrontend:

Currenlty there are some dependencies in source code about way the cl tools are handled. I will remove all this later and enable adding easily new formats and rules of handling them.

PS.theFrontend works on Windows 95, 98 and any later Windows version, the compatibility is one of main goals, it works fine even under linux using wine.

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

I would be interested if this could run natively on Linux. I've no idea what that would involve since I don't know how many of the backends are open source/run on Linux...

Well theFrontend is written in C++ with MFC and I can't compile it natively for linux. But it runs well with WINE. The backends can be (or should be) also Win32 executables and it all works well (there are some issues with FAAC/FAAD but Nero command-line encoders/decoders are working good here) under linux. I have tested this under Debian, Suse and currently under Ubuntu linux distros.

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

The program is under development and new version will come out soon with upgraded codecs configuration. I am planing to release package (installer) with some free encoders/decoders properly configured to use with theFrontend. I will post the news in this topic.

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

wisodev, just a word regarding the form layout... It seems to me that you may have the "preset" and "encoder" lists in reverse order. Were it me, considering standards, I would place the greater dominant factor to the left and the lesser dominant factor to the right.

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

wisodev, just a word regarding the form layout... It seems to me that you may have the "preset" and "encoder" lists in reverse order. Were it me, considering standards, I would place the greater dominant factor to the left and the lesser dominant factor to the right.

Anyhow, it's just a suggestion. Best of luck to you.

Is the placement of preset and format lists an usability problem or only a formal problem. I am pretty much used to this layout and so I do not find it confusing or unusable. It is trivial to change this anyway.

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

wisodev, I'm not sure whether to describe it as a formal or a usability problem. I just think it makes more sense the other way around. In any event, I don't mind too much whether it's switched one way or the other. I just figured I'd recommend. =)

Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

I second this one. On Linux it's a serious problem getting any transcoding properly running with external encoders, especially in the cases of non-free formats. For me it's Nero AAC which causes serious issues, because practically any Linux transcoder only flawlessly works with FAAC instead. Support for Nero AAC has to be scripted externally in all applications I'm aware of, causing further problems concerning the tags' retention.